Based on a romantic bestseller by Nicholas Sparks, this old-fashioned tearjerker features Zac Efron (star of the High School Musical series and, more interestingly, Me and Orson Welles) as a marine sergeant who finds a photograph of a good-looking American blonde in the rubble after a firefight in Iraq. Believing it to be a talisman that saved his life, he follows a trail that leads to a small Louisiana town and becomes detraumatised through his relationship with the woman portrayed, her cute son, her jealous ex-husband and her dotty mom. There's a thin line between the exploration of grief and its exploitation that this film crosses. By the way, can Taylor Schilling, who plays the heroine, be related to the Fifty Shilling Tailors once found on every British high street?